Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Abbreviations

italicization of i.e. & e.g.

MOS:ABBR#Latinisms and abbreviations says, Latin-language terms should be tagged as such using the {{lang|la|...}} template […] except those that are commonly used in English, such as AD, c., e.g., etc., i.e., and several others found in the table above. That "table above" links to MOS:ABBR#Miscellaneous shortenings, which—contrary to the examples provided—does not list "AD", "e.g.", "etc.", nor "i.e."

I do see the and in that original sentence, but for clarity's sake, should those Latin-derived abbreviations added to the MOS:ABBR#Miscellaneous shortenings table just to make explicit whether they should be italicized and marked or not? I've a lot of time on the project, and even I find the current wording and explanation kinda unclear. Just a suggestion! — Fourthords | =Λ= | 17:43, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

It is worth noting they are listed in another table a few headings above. Maybe just say "those that are listed on this page in general", as their inclusion would imply they are English vocabulary? Remsense诉 18:18, 5 August 2024 (UTC)

The abbr template - how often?

See User talk:Mauls#Over-use of abbr

Regarding the {{abbr}} template, is there a guideline on how often it should be used in an article, section or paragraph? More specifically, is this edit an overuse of that template? I counted 27 instances of {{abbr|L&CR|Lancaster and Carlisle Railway}}, 20 instances of {{abbr|N&CR|Newcastle and Carlisle Railway}} and 16 instances of {{abbr|M&CR|Maryport and Carlisle Railway}}, a total of 63 uses in one section alone - there are dozens more elsewhere in the article. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:53, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

For that specific example, absolutely overkill. If L&CR is preferred, then the first time it appears it should be Lancaster and Carlisle Railway (L&CR) with all subsequent uses only needing to be L&CR; {{abbr}} shouldn't even be necessary. Primefac (talk) 14:49, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

MOS:ACRO says “Upon re-use in a long article, the template can be used to provide a mouse-over tooltip, giving the meaning of the acronym again without having to redundantly link or spell it out again.”

In the case of this article, it was very much necessary - a large number of very similar abbreviations are used densely in close proximity (L&CR, M&CR, N&CR, NWR, NER, LNWR…) and it is very easy for a reader to get confused.

Mauls (talk) 18:32, 1 September 2024 (UTC)

I believe the key phrase there is a long article, so I will grant you that repeated use might be worth an abbrev if those instances are in different sections, but not 8 times in 2 paragraphs. Primefac (talk) 11:30, 2 September 2024 (UTC)

Expand "e.g." to "for example"

Is this a good edit? @Mikepyne: Per MOS:LATINABBR I'm not seeing it as our usual editing practice. Andy Dingley (talk) 11:28, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

Seems to me like something totally innocuous on an individual basis but would be instantly disruptive if pursued or insisted upon across pages. The screen reader point is not persuasive to me for this specific case—to me it is natural to enunciate it as an initialism as a screen reader would.Remsense ‥ 论 11:40, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

I might actually rewrite the last one completely, because the basic point in that para is totally wrong! Andy Dingley (talk) 15:03, 11 September 2024 (UTC)

From a side discussion I found that Mikepyne derived the screenreader rationale from a misinterpretation of the InsideGovUK blog article linked below. That article found "eg" (and "ie") without the periods to be a problem, and says explicitly that "e.g." isn't a problem for screenreaders, though it goes on to give other reasons to replace it. Largoplazo (talk) 10:17, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

It may not yet be in the normal editing practice; I would advocate it should be.

Have a look at https://insidegovuk.blog.gov.uk/2016/07/20/changes-to-the-style-guide-no-more-eg-and-ie-etc/

In the context of the page I edited, the first replacement improves the reading flow. The second case, where the example text is in parentheses, is perhaps an instance where e.g. is more appropriate. Applying that difference consistently is challenging, though!

It would be worth investigating other style guides to see what other sites and users recommend. For example, https://universaldesign.ie/communications-digital/customer-communications-toolkit-a-universal-design-approach/customer-communications-toolkit-a-universal-design-approach-navigation/digital/writing-for-the-web Mikepyne (talk) 08:23, 12 September 2024 (UTC)

Talk:Autism#Acronyms

Editors are invited to comment at Talk:Autism#Acronyms on whether an acronym needs to be defined if it is only used in the references. Mitch Ames (talk) 09:54, 9 November 2024 (UTC)

Question on MOS:ACRO1STUSE

Hello,

This came up at a recent FAC, and didn't want to derail it by litigating then while it was open. What is the current intent of our 1st use policy? There are two lines but could potentially be read to contradict each other. We have first:

If there is an article about the subject of an acronym (e.g. NATO), then other articles should use the same style (capitalisation and punctuation) as that main article. If no such article exists, then style should be resolved by considering consistent usage in source material.

This is immediately followed by:

Unless specified in the "Exceptions" section below, an acronym should be written out in full for the first time

So, suppose there's a topic that uses the acronym form as the article title, or it's uncontroversially accepted that sources near-exclusively use the acronym form. Which is it? The first guideline suggests that we follow the usage of the Wikipedia article or sources, and use the acronym directly. The second suggests we spell it out regardless.

If the answer is the first, then great, we're done. If the answer is the second, that the guideline is still potentially a bit vague. "Unless specified in the "Exceptions" section below" sound very final, and yet the section goes on to describe the reasoning behind exceptions. This includes "something most commonly known by its acronym, in which case the expansion can be omitted". So... do we trust editors to apply this, or is the first sentence meant as a strict prohibition - if you think you've found an exception, then you need to get it added to The List first?

Onto the third layer. If we trust editor discretion, we are again done. If there is in fact a hard-and-fast rule, Exceptions list or nothing, then I'd argue we need to expand our Exceptions list, ideally with a class of cases rather than specific examples (but if we need to do specific examples, so be it.) The class I'm thinking of is something like "vestigal acronym" where the spelled-out meaning is essentially never used by the organization and rarely used in sources, especially if the original title is dated or outright offensive. I'll give what is hopefully an easy, historical example: The Arc, which isn't even capitalized any more (it used to be the ARC). The reason is clear: "retarded" was a neutral, scientific term in the 1950s, but became a pejorative by the 1980s and 90s, and the organization itself stopped highlighting itself as the "Association for Retarded Citizens" long before it actually changed its name. We don't need to limit test by mandating using the dated, old name, even in a hypothetical Wikipedia of 1990 or when discussing the organization historically.

This came up more specifically when discussing the NAACP, which basically never uses its spelled-out form as "colored" is considered dated and impolite at best in American English, offensive at worst. Their own website never uses the spelled-out origin, neither in their about section or their history page. The Wikipedia article is at "NAACP". It makes zero sense for our MOS to mandate something that our own article calls potentially a "slur", that sources don't use anymore, and that the organization itself doesn't use anymore. Obviously, including the historic name is fine for the article on the organization itself, but it's irrelevant and distracting on other articles, especially ones concerning history after the 1960s or so. It's not relevant to bring up a linguistic quirk. And a reader who isn't familiar with the group will be more helped by seeing the acronym they actually use rather than the acronym's origin they used in 1911-1950 or so, but don't really use much anymore (even if it remains on the books).

So... what does our current policy imply? (Hoping it's just the first option, where we follow the Wikipedia article / sources in these cases.) Pinging @Gog the Mild and Generalissima: who participated in the earlier discussion as well. SnowFire (talk) 02:37, 18 November 2024 (UTC)